


no darkness but ignorance

by orphan_account



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo, The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo, Winternight Series - Katherine Arden
Genre: F/M, Gen, The crossover AU nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-22 01:03:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17653052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: You can travel just about anywhere if you take the road through Midnight.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for this, except that I read both trilogies in very short order and some comparisons were inevitable.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three things Baghra Morozova did not know.

1. 

Baghra’s father is an orphan. He tells her about them once, in a fit of fatherly feeling: about the wild and adventurous mother who gave him his green eyes, about the fierce, serious father with the same black curls and sharp cheekbones. He tells her, too, about his uncle Aleksander Lightbringer, who died a hero on a distant battlefield, and about his cousin Marya the witch.

 

Baghra isn’t sure to she believes all of it (for who could summon blizzards or treat with demons, truly?) but when she asks him where they are now, the reminiscent gleam fades from his eyes like a flame doused by water.

 

“They died,” he says, something old and bitter in his voice. “My parents, they died. Saving their people. It seems to be a family tradition.”

 

“What about Cousin Marya?” Baghra asks, almost afraid of the answer.

 

“We,” her father says carefully, “had a…disagreement.” His hands stray to the carving in his lap; a firebird, wings outstretched. “We no longer speak.”

 

Baghra dislikes this. She wants a cousin to play with her; she wants not to be alone. “What kind of disagreement?”

 

Her father's smile is more teeth than real amusement.

 

“Over horses,” he said. “And who should have the right to ride them.”

 

The look on his face is _not nice_. Baghra lets the matter drop. She isn’t sure she wants to know.

 

2.

 

There is a one-eyed man in the marketplace, and he is watching her. Baghra buys turnips, and carefully does not turn around. She has a knife at her belt, and shadows in her hands, and she is far from helpless.

 

She moves through the crowd, and he follows. It is a gray, biting day in early winter. She draws her cloak more tightly around her frame, shivering as much from rage as cold. She would never have come into town if she hadn’t indulged her loneliness. Perhaps this is the natural consequence of wanting company.

 

At the corner of the square, she whips around, knife sliding out of her sleeve.

 

“Can I help you?” she asks, poisonously sweet.

 

The one-eyed man holds up his hands. He has, she notes with unease, her father’s own smile, wide and wild and just a little bit too sharp.

 

“Peace,” he says. “I thought you were someone I knew.”

 

“Oh,” Baghra says. “And who would that be?”

 

“My brother’s wife,” the one-eyed man says. “You have her hair. But–how strange–you have _his_ nose. You can imagine my confusion.”

 

Baghra raises an eyebrow. “Obviously you were mistaken.”

 

“Obviously I was,” says the one-eyed man. “To be seeing the dead in a living woman. My mistake, _devochka._ I’ll be going.”

 

He nods at her, courteous as a lord, and melts back into the teeming crowd. Baghra stands there a long time, just to be sure he’s gone. She feels as though she’s missed a step going down the stairs.

 

 

3.

She names her son _Aleksander_ , after the warrior-monk of her father’s stories. He will be a defender of men, she vows. He will be remembered in story and song, he will be a legend and a saint and a _hero_ , and he will lead their people out of the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nina Zenik receives a very unwelcome gift.

Nina dreams of a house on a quiet lake, and a forest at midnight. For a moment, she is on a starlit path, and her feet carry her forward as though they know the way even when she does not, but then Matthias’s hand comes down on hers and squeezes hard, and she turns back. She turns back, not once but many times, and each time is like parting with a limb.

 

“Brave girl, _”_ the shadows croon, and they become a bear, and then a man, and then a roiling mass of darkness that rises out of the general murk of their surroundings and glides towards her on silent feet. “Not even my brother could resist it in the end. But look at you, _devochka_. Defying death as though you were born to it.”

 

The shadows coalesce into a man again; a handsome, well-dressed man with a glint of mad glee in his single eye.

 

“Perhaps,” he muses, “we are not so different, Nina Zenik.”

 

He reaches for her and Nina jerks back instinctively. Somewhere beyond this clearing, Matthias is singing.

 

“Don’t be afraid,” the man says, in a cajoling tone that suggests that Nina very much should be. “I’m only a whisper in the dark.”

 

“You’re not real,” Nina says, hating the quiver in her voice. She is so _tired_. “I’m dreaming.”

 

“You took _parem,”_ the man says. “Mad and foolish, and most likely fatal. A terrible plan if ever there was one, but it showed courage.” He smiles, looking almost nostalgic. “They would have _loved_ you.”

 

Who “they” were Nina does not know, and she bites down on the instinct to ask. Whatever this man is–saint or demon or Grisha long dead–he is not to be trusted. He feels like a splinter under the skin of the world.

 

“I’m waking up now,” she says determinedly. Matthias is singing, singing. She needs only to find the thread of his voice and let it lead her out of the darkness. “You can’t follow me there.”

 

The man is smiling again. She gets the feeling that terrible things generally follow that smile. Matthias’s voice is so loud now that it trembles the trees.

 

“A gift before you go, _devochka,_ ” he says. “From my people to yours.”

 

“ _No_ ,” Nina says, but he has already seized her hand and pressed it to his lips. His touch burns like a brand, and Nina screams, trying to pull away. He reels her in and embraces her as if she is a weary traveler, and he the old friend welcoming her home.

 

“The dead,” he breathes in her ear, “are _always_ with us. Remember.”

 

She wakes with a strangled scream and half falls out of Matthias’s lap. He steadies her, brow wrinkling.

 

“Are you all right?”

 

She nods. Even as she tries to grasp for the dream it slithers away from her, and she is left with the faint memory of darkness and a foreign power humming in her veins.

 

The need for _parem_ hits her like a wave, and she buries her face in his chest. She can’t remember why it seemed so vital that she recall her dream a moment ago. Not now, with Matthias’s arms around her and that ache in her gut, not with Inej missing. 

 

She has much, much more important things to worry about than whatever nonsense her fevered mind can cook up.


End file.
